Medical imaging has a significant role in diagnosis, treatment planning, and treatment response assessment. As such, both the quality of the images obtained from imaging methods, and ensuring compliance of the images with appropriate protocols, is important in clinical practice. In particular, imaging endpoints can be incorporated into clinical trials to help accelerate developments of new drugs. In multicenter clinical trials, images acquired from different centers are sent to a centralized data management location for storage and analysis. Compliance of the imaging data with an imaging protocol defined for a particular analysis can be important for the success of the trial.
Cross sectional imaging is an imaging technique which produces a large series of two-dimensional images of a subject, e.g., a human subject. Via digital image processing, the series of two dimensional images produced by cross sectional imaging can be used to construct three-dimensional “objects” to demonstrate various internal structures of the subject, e.g., organs, tissue, blood, etc., and particular conditions of the subject, such as tumor, hemorrhage, trauma, etc. Examples of cross sectional imaging techniques include computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography, SPECT scanning, ultrasonography, among others.
In clinical practice, cross sectional imaging scans, such as CT scans, are used in the screening, diagnosing and following up with patients, generating a large of amount of imaging data. In clinical trials, cross sectional imaging scans for many patients or volunteers can be performed in accordance with a prescribed protocol(s). Ensuring that the scans cover the organ of interest and/or are performed with the correct contrast can be beneficial in the quality control of the clinical trials, as the number of patients enrolled in a trial can be limited and every scan valuable. It can be desirable to inform the operator timely if any of body part of interest is not covered in a study (scan), or if the contrast is incorrect in the study. Manual examination of every scan can be time-consuming and impractical. Therefore, there exists a need for a computer aided technique to identify such and/or other errors, and to improve the quality control of CT scans, and the quality control of cross sectional imaging scans in general.